


Fever Dreams

by ObscureReference



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Brief Appearances From Others - Freeform, Childhood Sickness, Dreams, Fever, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:07:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23861275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: Linhardt is sick. Again.Caspar has a bad dream and reminisces on the past.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 10
Kudos: 92





	Fever Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> (Minor spoilers) The implied/referenced character death tag is for Linhardt, who was a sickly kid and wasn't expected to live very long. If the idea of unspecified childhood illness bothers you at all, maybe hit the back button. He's fine now.

“Would you like a lump of sugar?” Ferdinand offered pleasantly.

Caspar looked at the cakes and tea set spread out between them. Why had he agreed to take tea with Ferdinand? He sometimes agreed to drink with the professor, but Caspar was no aficionado. He didn’t hold enough of an interest to want to listen to Ferdinand wax poetic about it either. At least the professor knew how to hold a conversation.

Besides, there was something else he was supposed to be doing.

Despite the fact Caspar had yet to reply, Ferdinand had already begun dropping sugar cubes directly into the tea pot.

“Tea is truly the noblest drink a noble can have,” he said.

Caspar looked around, a sense of urgency creeping along his spine. There was something he had to do. Something important.

Ferdinand had piled too much sugar into the tea pot. The white cubes were now spilling out of the top of the pot. 

“One might say it is even our duty to drink tea!”

Then he laughed for too long and too loud.

Ignoring him, Caspar craned his neck to get a better look at his surroundings. He didn’t remember how he’d got here. They were sitting near one of the pavilions in Garreg Mach, but it looked different than how he remembered. The garden was empty except for the two of them, and a strange lump was sprawled across the ground over Caspar’s shoulder—

His heart lurched. That lump was Linhardt.

Caspar tried to stand, only to find the backs of his legs glued to his chair.

“Ferdinand!” he said urgently.

Half the snacks on the table were hidden with sugar cubes now, he saw when he turned back around. Ferdinand kept pulling sugar cubes out of nowhere. The tea cups had entirely vanished under a mountain of white.

“What’s your favorite type of tea?” Ferdinand asked. He didn’t seem to notice the fact he had begun to float away from the table.

“Who cares?” Caspar snapped. “You need to find somebody! Linhardt—”

“Linhardt is partial to Angelica, but you don’t strike me as someone with similar taste,” Ferdinand said as he floated further away. “If they made a tea out of meat, I’m sure you’d enjoy that. That doesn’t seem very noble-like, however, and you know people like you and I must always strive to uphold…”

Ferdinand continued to talk on and on about tea and nobility, seemingly unaware that he was drifting farther and farther away from Caspar and into the air with every breath. After a moment, Caspar could barely hear him anymore.

“Professor!” Caspar cried desperately, looking over his shoulder again. Linhardt was still laying on the ground, unmoving. Caspar couldn’t see his face.

The professor appeared suddenly, face blank the way it had been those first few months they had lived in the monastery, back when Caspar had still been a student. Their eyes were piercing, however, and they didn’t seem to care that Caspar was struggling against invisible restraints.

“Professor, help!” Caspar said. “Linhardt’s in trouble!”

Except the professor had turned into Hubert when he wasn’t looking.

“He’s perfectly _fine_ ,” Hubert said with a sneer. “Calm down.”

Caspar tried to look over his shoulder again but found he could no longer move his head. He knew something terrible was happening behind him. He knew it.

He opened his mouth to plead with Hubert but no sound left his lips. His voice was frozen in his throat.

Hubert gave him an ugly look, like Caspar was hopeless.

 _Please,_ Caspar mouthed. The garden was now on fire. Flames licked at the bottom of his chair, but all Caspar could think about was Linhardt collapsed in the grass.

Edelgard was there in her Emperor regalia. She looked at Caspar with a determined expression and raised Aymr above her head.

 _Linhardt_ , he thought, curling his fingers against the stiff arms of his chair.

Edelgard swung.

Caspar awoke with a jerk.

He jolted upright, swiping at the wetness around his mouth on reflex. His arm came away only a little wet with drool, thankfully. Linhardt always complained that Caspar was the only person who could continue to make a mess even when—

Oh.

He’d been sleeping.

That made more sense.

He rubbed blearily at his eyes, looking around. The creeping sense that something awful was happening hadn’t entirely left him, but it was duller now, at least. He flexed his fingers.

It was sunset. He could see the orange and red glow of evening through the window. A few hours had probably passed since he’d fallen asleep then. He didn’t really remember returning to his room after punching dummies on the training grounds for a while, but he must have figured Dorothea wouldn’t let him see Linhardt again so soon and returned on autopilot.

Caspar stood up and splashed his face with cold water from the basin. That helped a lot. He wandered into the dining hall to grab a plate of food for Linhardt. Then, when he saw the hallway was empty, he snuck into Linhardt’s bedroom because he wasn’t sick enough to be considered an infirmary patient—which was a good thing, Dorothea had said again and again.

Caspar still wasn’t sure he believed her. What was the point of having an infirmary if sick people weren’t allowed in? If none of the healers thought they needed to check up on Linhardt to make sure he didn’t unexpectedly get worse in the night, then that job fell to Caspar instead.

The door was unlocked when he tried the handle. He tiptoed into Linhardt’s room as quietly as he could. If Linhardt had been awake, he probably would have complained that Caspar wasn’t very quiet at all and that he in fact clomped around like one of Ferdinand’s horses on a good day. But Linhardt wasn’t awake to complain, so Caspar set the plate of food on Linhardt’s messy desk—probably on top of some important papers he wanted to save, but if Linhardt really wanted to save them, he’d keep his room cleaner, so whatever—and turned to scrutinize the man in question.

Linhardt didn’t _look_ worse, Caspar thought tentatively. It was a little hard to tell because Linhardt had always been pale and stick thin, but it didn’t seem like he’d moved much since Caspar had left him that afternoon. He looked a little sweaty, maybe. But he’d looked sweaty when Caspar had left him too, and that was good, right? You needed to sweat out a fever. Maybe that explained why the room felt so stuffy too. Linhardt was just radiating heat.

“Have you come to pass judgement on me?” Linhardt asked, startling Caspar out of his thoughts. He had barely cracked his eyes open to tiredly stare at Caspar. Apparently Caspar hadn’t been as sneaky as he’d thought. “If so, I should tell you that Dorothea and Hubert have both already determined I’m not dying.”

“Hubert too?” Caspar asked.

“He’s fussy,” Linhardt grumbled, and the image of a fussy Hubert pretending not to fret was so funny Caspar almost laughed. “That other healer didn’t say who had sent her, but it wasn’t hard to tell.”

Caspar popped a knuckle. “Yeah, well, Hubert probably wants to make sure you’re not going to get any germs on his precious Emperor.”

“Goddess forbid.”

This time Caspar did laugh.

This was good. Linhardt was talking. Joking, even, albeit sarcastically. Maybe things were looking up.

“So you’re feeling better then?” he asked.

Linhardt grunted. “No. I feel like death warmed over.”

Caspar’s face fell. Linhardt, who had closed his eyes again at some point, didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh,” he said.

A beat passed. Linhardt cracked an eye open again.

“I’m still not dying,” he said.

Caspar huffed, leaning back against Linhardt's desk. “I _know_.”

“And yet you’ve returned despite the fact Dorothea kicked you out not long ago.”

“That was _hours_ ago,” Caspar defended. It had been at least three, probably.

“You’re fussier than Hubert.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst patient ever,” Caspar said. Gesturing to the desk, he said, “I brought you dinner, and this is the thanks I get?”

Linhardt grunted. It might have been a thank you. Or he simply didn’t care.

Caspar crossed his arms. “What, do you want me to spoon feed you now too?”

“I’m not hungry,” Linhardt mumbled. “I’ll eat later.”

“You should eat now if you want to get any better,” Caspar said. “Unless you like laying in bed all day, feeling like garbage.”

Linhardt grimaced without opening his eyes. “I have certainly had better naps.”

“Exactly. So eat now, and then you can go back to sleep for the rest of the day.”

“Hm. I’ll go back to sleep now, if it’s all the same to you.”

Caspar groaned. “Linhardt!”

Linhardt winced at the volume of his voice.

“Caspar, please,” he said tiredly, and this time genuine exhaustion bled into his petty complaints. “I’d really like to rest.”

Caspar hunched his shoulders, instantly feeling guilty. “Sorry.”

 _It’s fine,_ Linhardt didn’t say. Caspar knew it was fine because Linhardt would have said something if it wasn’t. The room fell silent.

Linhardt didn’t bother opening his eyes. He was probably waiting for Caspar to leave. Or he had already fallen asleep again. There had been plenty of times in the past where Linhardt had avoided eating in favor of sleep even at his healthiest, but Caspar wondered if he wasn’t feeling more nauseous than he was letting on as well.

He eyed the plate of food he’d brought. Some bread, a bit of thin soup, a tiny bit of meat. Those were all light on the stomach, right?

When Linhardt had collapsed in the library earlier that morning, it had been… scary. Not scary the same way the war had been, exactly, because the war had been _awful_ even when the battles themselves had sometimes been exhilarating, and Caspar wasn’t sure the type of fear the war had inspired in people could ever really be comparable to, well, anything.

Linhardt collapsing had been scary in a different sense. Scary in a way that made Caspar remember things he hadn’t thought about in a long time.

Except everyone said Linhardt just had a fever. That he had stood up too fast on an empty stomach—and probable exhaustion, given his strange sleeping habits—and he'd gotten dizzy. Apparently Petra had even caught Linhardt before he hit the ground, which was good.

When Caspar had heard about Linhardt's collapse, he’d abandoned Ferdinand on the training grounds and sprinted all the way to the infirmary only to be told Linhardt had been taken to his room to rest. So then Caspar had turned around and sprinted all the way there instead. None of it had felt real until he saw Linhardt sitting up in bed with his own eyes, sulkily taking tips from a bowl of soup while Dorothea scrutinized his appearance. The sight of him sitting there had done something funny to Caspar's chest, and it hadn’t gone back to normal since.

So Linhardt was fine. Probably. Caspar wasn’t being _fussy_ like Hubert. He was just—cautious. No matter what the other healers had said, he didn’t want Linhardt to get worse.

“Hey,” Caspar said without thinking after a while, by which time Linhardt had certainly fallen asleep. “You want to hear something stupid?”

To his surprise, Linhardt actually replied. “No, but I get the feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”

Caspar looked at where Linhardt lay very still on the bed. Then he looked at his hands.

“Anyway,” he said. “Remember when we were kids, and you were sick all the time?”

 _And everyone thought you were going to die for real_ , he didn’t say.

There had been a reason the von Hevrings had only managed to produce a singular heir. It hadn’t been for lack of trying.

Linhardt had apparently been a difficult birth. His parents had already been a little older by the time Linhardt’s mother had managed to get pregnant for the fist time, and Caspar had sometimes wondered if their age had been a factor. Or maybe it had been something else. He didn't know. In any case, Countess von Hevring had never gotten pregnant a second time, and for years news of Linhardt's infamous poor health never failed to make rounds in the noble gossip circles outside Hevring territory. 

It was pure coincidence, not planning, that had caused Caspar and Linhardt to be introduced in the first place. Caspar's father hadn't seen the point in introductions at the time; he'd been sure the "von Hevring brat" would "never make it to double digits anyway," so why bother introducing their children to one another? In a stroke of luck, Caspar and Linhardt had ended up meeting eventually, but it had never been a sure thing.

Although they’d both been young, Caspar remembered his early visits to Hevring territory well. Despite all the healers the von Hevrings called upon and all the strange medicines Linhardt complained about taking when he was conscious enough for conversation, Linhardt had been bedbound with illness practically every time Caspar had been dragged along to visit with his father. He practically never made the journey to Enbarr like some of the other noble kids Caspar remembered glimpsing on his few trips there, like Ferdinand or Bernadetta. Seemingly perpetually pale and underweight, Linhardt ad never been well enough to travel, even during the few times he'd been tentatively declared "healthy" for a short time. 

There had been a few notable times where Linhardt had fallen so ill during a visit that Caspar had been forbidden from seeing him. He remembered the low tones the adults spoke in during those days. The specifics had never reached his ears, but Caspar had known what everyone else expected to happen. Those were the times he had sneaked in to see Linhardt anyway and fearfully stared at his friend's sleeping form for hours, listening to his labored breathing with strained ears until someone else came in and Caspar scrambled to hide. 

Visiting Linhardt then felt a lot like visiting Linhardt now.

Linhardt grunted, which could have meant anything. Caspar, lost in memory, had almost forgotten what he had been saying.

“Oh, uh—" Caspar blinked. "Maybe you already know this—although maybe you don’t, since you slept all the time. Like, even more than you sleep now, which is pretty hard to believe—"

“Caspar,” Linhardt said flatly.

“I’m getting there!” Caspar protested. Where was he? Oh, right. “ _Anyway_ , you were sick all the time, and nobody was allowed to see you, even though I begged and begged since you weren’t contagious or anything. Nobody would let me in. But you were the laziest guy I knew, even when you were healthy. So when you were that sick and you couldn’t be bothered to stay awake for two minutes so the healers could check you over, I got worried you’d be too lazy to do other things too.”

“I was deathly ill, Caspar,” Linhardt said with a sigh. “I was also a child. What responsibilities were you concerned I wasn’t completing?”

Caspar shrugged. “I dunno. Like, breathing?”

There was an audible pause. Then Linhardt tilted his head in Caspar’s direction, peaking at Caspar between his eyelashes.

“You thought I was so lazy I’d stop _breathing_?” he asked, incredulous. The surprise in his voice was almost enough to make him seem awake.

“Can you blame me?” Caspar laughed at himself, feeling only a little awkward. “We were kids! And you’re still really lazy.”

“Not lazy enough to _die_ ,” Linhardt said, frowning.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t so sure.” He felt a little better hearing Linhardt sound so dismissive of the prospect. “Anyway, I used to sneak into your room while you were on bed rest to make sure you didn’t stop breathing in the night. I almost got caught a couple times too. But it was worth it to know you weren’t going to slip away in your sleep or anything.”

There was a beat before Linhardt replied, something new—contemplative, maybe—in his voice.

“Is that why you’ve been hovering all day?”

“I’m not _hovering_.” Caspar wrinkled his nose.

Linhardt, with his pale cheeks and vaguely uncomfortable body language, looked considerate. Even while sick, he was probably processing a hundred things Caspar hadn’t noticed. He squirmed a little under Linhardt’s gaze.

After a moment of silence, Linhardt sighed. “Alright. Just don’t expect me to coddle you when you catch whatever bug I have after this.”

“What?” Caspar said.

Linhardt was already scooting over on the bed, despite how obviously it pained him to move—out of laziness, probably, and not _actual_ pain, Caspar told himself. “You can stay in the chair or you can come over here,” he said. “It’s your choice. Just be quick about it and don’t kick. And do be quiet if you leave after I fall asleep this time. If you keep waking me up, I’ll never get better.”

“Oh,” Caspar said, finally catching on.

Linhardt rolled onto his side and buried his cheek into his pillow, leaving a space on the bed beside him just large enough for Caspar to crawl into. It didn’t seem like he had anything else to say on the matter.

After a moment of quietly watching the even rise and fall of his chest, Caspar stood up. He stepped over to the bed and tucked himself in next to Linhardt as gently as he could manage. The bed noticeably dipped under his weight anyway. Linhardt didn’t speak or shove at his chest when Caspar slid into bed next to him, so Caspar figured he had expected that much.

After another few seconds of building up his courage, Caspar wrapped an arm around Linhardt’s chest and pushed some of his limp hair away from his face. He breathed out.

Caspar pressed his lips against Linhardt’s forehead and internally frowned at the heat he felt radiating there. Externally, he tried not to squirm too much. Linhardt made an unintelligible sound.

“Sorry,” he whispered, staring at a blank point on the wall behind Linhardt’s head. “You have some medicine you’re supposed to take tonight. I’ll pick it up later. I just…”

Linhardt didn’t say anything at that, and Caspar didn’t check to see if he was awake. He felt Linhardt’s quiet breaths brush against his neck and occupied himself with focusing on that instead.

**Author's Note:**

> I could probably have cleaned this up way more, but it's been sitting in my drafts, so I finally went ahead and put it here before I forgot. I like the idea that Linhardt used to be a pretty sickly kid.
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on my [tumblr!](http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/)


End file.
